Learning Zone

Are Religious Experiences Real?

For
many who have had a near death experiences (NDE), the experience has
had a profoundly religious effect on them, changed their outlook and
led them to live more altruistic, less materialistic lives. Perhaps, in
order to understand NDEs better, we need to understand religious
experiences better. Many people have in fact likened NDEs to religious
experiences.

Although the scientific study of religious
experience is still in its infancy, there has certainly been some
progress in this area in the last 30 years. Dr Andrew Newberg, a
radiology professor and neurological imaging specialist at the
University of Pennsylvania, is a leading figure in the study of the
brain biology (neurobiology) of religious experiences. He has used
high-tech imaging techniques to observe changes in brain function that
occur during meditation and deep prayer. It is thought that his work
may ultimately help to show how our minds move beyond the self and open
to the divine.

In his book Why God Won't Go Away and
numerous scientific publications Newberg has described the results of
experiments that he and others have carried out. These have
demonstrated that prayerful meditation is correlated with a quieting of
activity and reduction in blood flow in the posterior superior parietal
lobe, an area that lies towards the middle of the brain and is normally
responsible for providing us with our sense of orientation. This may
indicate how the person meditating is experiencing oneness with the
'sacred' and a loss of boundaries of the self. Studies have also
demonstrated that the frontal and temporal areas of the brain become
active during meditation.

At the same time various
chemical changes have been shown to take place in the blood. There is
an increase in melatonin and serotonin levels and a reduction in
cortisol (a steroid hormone) and epinephrine levels. This makes sense,
as the former two hormones are involved in relaxation, whereas the
latter two are increased during physical stress.

During
an interview with a magazine, Professor Newberg was asked whether the
experiences of people meditating were externally real or not. He
explained that scientifically proving the religious reality of his
studies might not be possible:
'While I think we have provided the
most comprehensive neurological model of meditation and prayer to date,
I can't prove or disprove that when somebody connects with God, he or
she has actually connected. My publisher originally wanted me to call
this a "real" experience - which we have no way of proving. Eventually,
we compromised with the term "neurologically real" and we are in fact
seeing something that is real from that perspective.'

Ultimately,
from a scientific point of view, all that we experience, including
religious experiences and NDEs, are mediated by the brain. Undoubtedly
we will one day discover the molecular mediators of religious
experiences and NDEs and also the exact areas of the brain that mediate
them, but this will only tell us what parts of the brain are involved
in the experiences, not whether the experiences are real.

Our
brain and our senses limit our ability to determine what is truly real.
Therefore until the correct experiments can be done, we may have to
move away from thinking about whether NDEs are real or not. We do not
have the physical senses to determine whether there is an external
reality beyond what we can perceive and we have not yet developed the
scientific instruments that will allow us to determine this objectively.

Looking for a detailed discussion?

Then be sure to read The Spiritual Brain, a new book by Dr Mario Beauregard, a neuroscientist from The University of Montreal -